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“You and me, time and space. You watch us run.” - River Song [Forest of the Dead]
“I was imprisoned for being me, right at the point when I wasn’t sure what that meant. Ooh, it’s been a tough few decades.”
“You’re okay now, yeah?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” And with that the Doctor lights up the TARDIS, forcing a grin onto her face as she twirls to face Jack. “So, how’s Ianto?”
Jack’s face changes instantly, the wary excitement for having found her again suddenly replaced by a pain the Doctor knows far, far too well.
“Oh, Jack. I’m sorr-”
“How’s River?” he interrupts, though there’s no bitterness in his voice, only the wish to move the conversation away from his past.
The Doctor’s hearts skip a beat; it’s a painful staccato reminding her of the life she’s lost right at the point when she’s not even sure of the life she’s currently living.
“Oh, you know. She’s out there. Somewhere. Timey wimey and all that.” There’s a short laugh that sounds far too faked, and the Doctor realises with a wince that it’s her own. She snaps her jaw shut, clenching it tightly, and looks reluctantly up at Jack.
Jack’s eyes narrow suspiciously. He takes a step towards her, and despite how good it felt to be hugged again, the Doctor takes an automatic step away.
“When was the last time you saw her, Doctor?”
The Doctor swallows.
“How...how do you know River anyway?” she deflects, skipping to the other side of the TARDIS console and flipping a couple of switches. She knows they won’t do anything but open the doors to the swimming pool, but her fingers are itching to do something .
Jack gives in to her obvious avoidance of his question. He leans nonchalantly against the console and smiles fondly.
“She stole something from me. Or I stole something from her. The memory is quite fuzzy, though to be honest I’m not sure if that’s old age or River’s lipstick…”
It’s quite automatic, the pained sound that squeezes through her clenched teeth, but it has Jack by her side in an instant - a hand that’s both welcome and unwelcome at the same time gripping carefully at her bicep.
“She’s gone isn’t she? You tell me right now, Doctor. River is my friend, I deserve to know.”
Thousands of years ago, the idea of Jack and River being friends would have filled the Doctor with a horrified dread. But now, it brings a sick sense of comfort. Because despite all his faults, Jack’s a good, loyal friend, and River deserved something other than an absent husband.
“She died the very first day I met her.”
The words release a weight inside her, the admittance of guilt she’s never been able to voice to anyone else before. And before she realises it, the Doctor’s legs have collapsed from under her. She crumples to the floor, Jack’s warmth closing around her as he half catches half falls with her.
“Time travel,” he mutters bitterly.
“Time travel,” the Doctor agrees.
“What...happened?”
“She died so I didn’t. Time can be written, I said. Not those times, not one line, she said.” Her voice stutters, breaks. “And then...I- I just kept running into her. Over and over again. She was everything I should never have wanted - a murderer, a thief, with a gun strapped to her hips, and lies rolling off her tongue. Spoilers. ”
She can feel Jack smile against the top of her head, and she belatedly realises she’s curled into him like a child seeking comfort from a parent. Her cheeks are wet, and she pulls back to see a damp patch spreading across Jack’s shirt. When was the last time she’d cried like this? In sadness, not in anger?
“But Jack,” she croaks, looking up at him through blurry vision. “She was brave, and strong, and beautiful. She was good. And I loved her more than anything.”
He hugs her again, tighter this time, and she’s not surprised to find her own shirt dampening at the shoulder.
“She’s a time traveller,” he mutters against her. “Can’t you just find a younger version of her?”
The Doctor bites back a sob, and sighs into Jack’s neck instead.
“She never met this me, before she...I know my last body was her last husband. And I’m not betraying her memory by risking her timeline for some selfish need to hold her again, Jack.”
Jack pushes her gently away from him, a cheeky grin in place despite the wetness around his eyes. “It’s a shame. She’d have been overjoyed at your upgrade.” And the Doctor finds a laugh - a real, honestly amused laugh - bubbling up from inside her.
“Right.” The Doctor stands, brushing non-existent dust from her prison jumpsuit. She clears her throat with a pointed cough, and looks down at Jack. ”Enough of this. I had a lot to think about in there. And three very special people I’ve missed.”
Jack jumps to his feet. There’s a quick swipe of his hand across his eyes, and he’s back to the aggravating, insolence she prefers from him. “One of them was me, right?”
“You never change,” she says softly, a smile making its way across her face.
“Wish I could say the same.”
He grins back at her, and presses his hands against the console as the Doctor grips tightly to the lever.
“Find me my Fam,” she says, and the time rotor whirs to life.
----
It’s years later when she stumbles across Jack again. He’d managed to ping her a message to meet him at some small market on a backwater planet, and her curiosity had gotten the better of her. She’s left Yaz and Dan on the TARDIS, not quite sure what debauchery Jack has in store for her, and has been stumbling through the crowd looking for her american immortal for almost half an hour now.
It’s not until she hears an achingly familiar but oh so forgotten peel of laughter that she realises what Jack has done. Her entire body freezes, fear gripping hold of her as she spots a tangle of golden blonde curls across the marketplace.
“Jack,” she groans, only jumping slightly when the man himself appears beside her.
“Go talk to her, Doctor.”
“I can’t . The timelines.”
“She won’t even know it’s you. You’re a bit different from all your other bodies.”
The Doctor grimaces, because she knows technically Jack is right.
“How is this supposed to help me?” she says, eyes unable to leave River’s form as she haggles with a street vendor over what the Doctor really hopes aren’t explosives.
“I don’t know,” Jack admits, and she feels him shrug beside her. “But if I could spend even a second more with Ianto, I’d take the chance in a heartbeat.”
She manages to break away from watching River to look up at Jack. He’s smiling sadly, his own gaze fixed across the market. The Doctor sighs.
“Thanks, Jack. I owe you one.”
“Ha, more than one I’d say. River’s going to be furious that I’ve stood her up.” He shoots her a grin, and a half hearted salute. “See you around, Doc.”
It takes the Doctor a while to move - an embarrassing amount of time if she was ever honest with herself - but despite the years it’s been, she can’t ignore the draw of River’s presence forever. She moves through the crowd like a zombie, barely noticing the elbows or shoulders that knock her as she passes through.
And by the time she’s barely an arms length away from her goal, the Doctor realises she has no idea what to say. So she remains silent, an idiot standing longingly behind her wife. There’s no visible holster on River’s hip, and her hair is longer - a slight tint of red to it that tells the Doctor where exactly River is in her timeline. She’s closer to the Library than she is to Stormcage, and the knowledge fills the Doctor with both elation and dread.
“I-” She presses her lips together and frowns. But River apparently hears her anyway. She turns, and seeing her face is a whole new explosion of emotion inside the Doctor’s chest. It physically hurts . The Doctor is barely two seconds away from deciding this has been one huge mistake - mind already running through the calculations for throwing Jack into the nearest black hole - when River’s eyes light up in recognition.
“Sweetie? What are you doing here?”
There’s a moment. A moment where the Doctor’s vision blurs at the edges, her hearts doing something strange and foreign in her chest. It’s the first time these ears have heard that word from River’s lips, and the Doctor is not quite sure how to process it.
“I-” she repeats uselessly.
“I was meant to meet Harkness, but he’s running incredibly late.” She huffs. “But I’ll quite happily trade him in for you any day, my love.” River laughs, and a hand shoots out to grab the Doctor’s before she has a chance to pull away - not that she’d ever pull away from River. Not now, not ever. “There’s something suspicious happening in the mine on the edge of town. Though no one here really wants to talk about it. I do love a good conspiracy. Care to join me?”
The Doctor can only nod as River pulls her away from the market stall. Her hand is warm, large - and that sensation in itself is new and strange, River’s hands have always been so small before - and the sensory input of being around her is starting to get a little bit too much.
“River…” and she has to pause. Her wife’s name sounds different with this voice, this accent. And the reverence in which she says her name has River pausing in her steps.
River looks at her quizzically, eyes narrowing for a brief moment before widening with understanding.
“Oh. Oh! Sweetie, I’m sorry. This is the first time you’ve seen me since you regenerated, isn’t it?”
“First?” the Doctor squeaks, the implication of more suddenly reverberating around her skull.
River smiles, and everything else around them fades away as her hands come to rest against the Doctor’s face. “The first of many,” she promises.
And then River’s mouth is on hers: the angle is foreign - she’s never been shorter than River before - but the feel of it is heartsbreakingly familiar. The Doctor’s hands grip into the fabric at River’s waist, her mouth opening to River on instinct as a small, embarrassingly needy sound slips from her throat. The taste of time explodes across her tongue, and the Doctor’s hands tighten, pulling River even closer against her.
She’s not quite sure how long she presses herself against River’s warmth, but eventually her wife pulls away with a soft laugh and a softer smile. Her thumbs brush over the Doctor’s cheeks, smoothing away the unexpected tears. The Doctor sniffs, raising a hand to cover one of River’s, and lets out a laugh that could quite easily pass for a sob instead.
“The first of many?” she repeats, hoping River will explain without having to be asked.
River nods. There’s a familiar spark of mischief in her eyes and it sends a wonderful, forgotten, missed feeling of dread through the Doctor’s stomach.
“It’s a little bit easier to navigate when neither of us are dead,” she says somewhat cryptically before dropping her hands from the Doctor’s face and skipping backwards with a grin. “Come on, Sweetie. You know the drill. It can’t be told, has to be lived. Now help me figure out why the rocks in this mine are coming to life.”
The Doctor’s mouth opens and closes pathetically for far too long, until River shoots a wink over her shoulder and everything slots into place with a forceful amount of clarity.
“Has to be lived, you say?” she asks.
River’s only reply is an over-the-top wink - one that promises everything and more - and a hand held out in offering. The Doctor closes her own hand around River’s instantly, and as she lets her wife drag her into almost certain danger - with a smile on both their faces - the Doctor decides she won’t throw Jack into a black hole afterall.